Star Hospice House Ribbon Cutting

Chautauqua Hospice and Palliative Care celebrated the completion of Star Hospice House at a ribbon cutting February 8.

This is Chautauqua County’s first dedicated hospice facility. It will serve as many as 200 patients per year. The facility includes rooms and living spaces for families to rest, prepare meals, and focus on their loved one.

County Executive PJ Wendel, who lives nearby and watched the project develop every day, said palliative care used to be a floor in the hospital with an institutional setting. He said the Star Hospice House gives families a sense of peace and the feeling of spending their last days in their own home, “One of the things that has been resonating in the last couple weeks in dealing with situations that have occurred, is that how we take care of one another, how compassionate we are as a community, and what we do for one another, especially here in Chautauqua County, is something I’m very proud to represent. Howard Bruckner said this in a quote, ‘The patients and the families may not remember what you said to them but they will always remember how you made them feel,’ and the Star House will do just that.”

Chautauqua Hospice purchased the home adjacent to its Lakewood office in 2019 and started a fundraising campaign in 2020 to renovate the house that ultimately exceeded its goal of $2.1 million with a total of $2.7 million in donations.

Campaign Co-Chairs Mary Rappole and Dr. Bert Rappole said the goal is always to make it so families can be at their own homes while a loved one is dying, but that’s not always possible, “And then when they get toward the end, they can’t take care of themselves in their own facilities, their own homes, so they would be forced to go to a nursing home. This will provide a place where they can die with the care providers who have been with them, the nurses who have been taking care of them, and there’s a place in the house for the family to come from L.A. or New York and stay with them.”

Dr. Rappole and Mary Rappole both thanked the local foundations who donated almost $700,000 toward the project with the rest of the donations coming from the community members, businesses, and other organizations.